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JohnKaranja.com has now joined the AFRIGATOR Streamer and to celebrate our expanded presence in the African Blogosphere. To celebrate we are posting a video to show the beauty of African Cities from Cairo to Cape Town, Abidjan to Nairobi, Maputo to Lagos. Enjoy. Nice Soundtrack.

Happy Holidays to you all.

The piracy problem affecting shipping transport across the horn of Africa has become a problem for the Kenyan Economy because it is diminishing the volume of shipping using the Indian Ocean route and endangering the lives of crew and seafarers that use this route. Kenya’s Chief of Staff General Jeremiah Kianga was recently quoted as saying that Kenya’s Airforce would patrol the Kenyan’s territory at sea. Are Kenya’s armed forces prepared to handle this type of threat on its own territory. Do they have the capacity to protect Kenya from threats nearest to her.

Watch Video below.

Kenya Army

The army’s organisation is as follows: 2 armored brigades, 4 infantry brigades, 1 engineer brigade, 1 armoured reconnaissance battalion, 2 artillery battalions, 3 engineer battalions, 1 independent air cavalry battalion with 35 armed helicopters (Embakasi), 5 infantry battalions, 1 parachute battalion.

The country in 2007 imported 110 T-72 Tanks from Ukraine. 33 of the Same Tanks have been Hijacked by Somali pirates of the coast of Kenya in September 2008.

Tanks imported by Kenya in 2007 and 2008

Other armoured vehicles in the arsenal include Recce: 72 x Panhard AML-60/-90, 12 x Ferret armoured car and 8 x Shorland armoured car which were intially designed in the 1950’s and purchased by Kenya’s first Independent regime.

Kenya Airforce

• 7 Northrop F-5 Freedom Fighter figher aircraft. There are reports that Kenya seeks to purchase an additional 15 used F5 fighter jets from Jordan.
• 37 helicopters (11 x Hughes 500MD Defender with TOW, 8 x Hughes 500ME Defender, and 15 x Hughes 500M Defender);
• 31 transport fixed wing (7 x de Havilland Canada DHC-5D Buffalo, 12 x Harbin Y-12 (II), 10 x Piper PA-31
• Navajo, 3 x de Havilland Canada DHC-8 Dash 8, 1x Fokker 70 (VIP), and 6 Dornier Do 28D-2 (in store);
• 23 transport helicopters (9 x IAR 330 Puma, 13 x Aérospatiale SA 330 Puma, and 1 x Aérospatiale SA 342 Gazelle);together with 34 training aircraft (12 x Scottish Aviation Bulldog 103/127, 8 x BAe Hawk Mk 52, 12 x Shorts Tucano, and 2 x helicopter Hughes 500D.

• The Air Force also has Air-to-Surface Missile (ASM) AGM-65 Maverick TOW, and Air-to-Air missile(AAM) AIM-9 Sidewinder.

F5 & F15 Jet Fighter.

Kenya Airforce F5 Tiger

MD 500 Defender Helicopter

Buffalo Transport Plane

Kenya Navy

• 10 x Missile Craft
• 6 x Patrol and Coastal Combatants
• 1 x Amphibious Craft; and 5 x Support Vessel

Parental divorce generally harms children significantly in the long term financially, psychologically, socially, physically and mentally. This due to these children lacking social capital, a term used to decribe social and emotional support systems that exist due to the existence of families within society (James Coleman). This is fundamentally because divorce involves the separation of husband and wife and break up of the family in an acrimonous manner that usually deprives the children of the benefit of a secure and stable informal learning environment. Divorce consequently reduces the ability of parents to buffer their children against negative factors in the environment. However there are some exceptional cases where divorce reduces harm to the children in the short term especially where there is abuse from either parent directed at the spouse and children. Divorce may reduce the physical and some physcological harm to the children but long term harm will still occur.

Divorce affects the children financially because of the break up of the financial structure within the familly because both parents now have to rely on their own personal incomes to survive whereas before they would usually pool their incomes into one financial resource that would usually help achieve more family goals. Biblarz and Raftery state “Since children’s success depends on the economic resources and equivalent services that parents provide, children who spend most of their childhood in a two-parent family (biological or stepfamily) will have the highest attainments because two parental figures are present to provide complementary resources.” As a result the separating couple individually would now have to use their personal incomes and effort to set up their own households hence spending less on goods benefitting the children such as quality education and better health care. Furthermore if the father were to set up another household elsewhere than these children would suffer more because the father would spend less on them and as a result they would be strained financially. Evidence shows that most fathers in the British cohort study (Kiernan 1999) do not give child support to their children because of fear how the mother would use the funds. Even in the cases where fathers do give support to their children they usually give far less than what husbands support their children with. This indicates that divorce creates a financial constraint reducing the availability of beneficial goods for children whose parents are divorced.

The social impact of divorce is enormous because study shows that children from divorced families tend to be more prone to divorce their partners later in their lives than those who come from normal households. Infact the impact on divorce in children is greater if the parents divorce in the childrens formative years, i.e  between 0 and 19 years as opposed to divorce in their later years 20 to 33 years (Seltzer 1994). This is because in the formative years children need both parents to develop adequate social skills and values that will help them form stable relationships in the future. For example male children need their fathers to guide them to become responsible men. The missing father is more devastative for boys than for girls as shown in the Moynihan report (1965). Men who grow with their single parent mothers tend to behave in a deviant way possessing violent natures eventually getting involved in criminal behaviour. Divorce also harms children because as Biblarz argues that divorced mothers tend not to get social support and therefore do not enjoy socioeconomic benefits that for example widowed mothers enjoy. This suggests children from divorced families are worse off in the long term than children from widowed families. British birth cohort hazard analysis (Kiernan 1999) for ages 0 to 33 shows how children from divorced children perform socially i.e the probabilities that they will exhibit behavioural problems at any age are much higher than those from stable families which indicates that divorce has a higher social impact for children from divorced families especially if the divorce occurs during the formative years of the child i.e. ages 4 to 19.

Many children from divorced families also tend to get affected psychologically and eventually get depressed and suicidal as opposed to children in normal families. This is because first and foremost they are unable to take sides with either parent during the divorce making them feel as though the divorce is their fault. Such children usually get affected by their parents arguing and fighting and this errodes their personal confidence and sense of security. “Children of divorce have lower attainments than children from two-parent families because they have had sustained exposure to their parents’ discord”(Biblarz and Raftery 1999). When the divorce eventaully happens the children feel inadequate and may end up being emotionally distabilized should no counselling measures be taken. This leads to drug abuse in some cases and in the most extreme cases suicide.  Divorce also forces couples to move apart sometimes very far from each other. Should the non custodial parent (usually the father) not communicate frequently, then the children may also feel a sense of loss of a parent. Girls are affected by the absense of their father by tending to be emotionally detached (withdrawn) from boys and men (including their husbands)  later in their lives. Divorce however seems to have a larger effect on boys than on girls (Kiernan 1999),  this translates in behavioural and psychological problems having larger outcomes on boys explaining why most boys in this categories exhibit more violent  or criminal tendencies than boys from stable homes. Girls seem to get affected by becoming neurotic depressive, a condition that is also exacerbated by their mothers behaviour. This situation is also carried into future relationships and may explain why marriages of these children don’t seem to last.

Divorce causes long term physical and consequently mental disorders for children who are between the ages of 0 and 4 in the long term, (Kiernan 1999). This is because when divorce happens when a child is of that age it means that the child does not get the adequate care it needs to develop fully. For instance if the child is in the custody of the father it misses breastfeeding opportunities as well as post natal care that leads to mental and mental deformities later on. This makes them unable to do well in sporting activities and school activities. In this regard these children are at a great disadvantage compared to their counterparts in stable families (Duncan and Duncan 1969; McLanahan and Sandefur 1994). Also due to the strain in financial resources in single parentship, these children are aslo not enrolled in positive social groups such as football teams or piano,ballet classes hence do not develop extracurricularly. As with the case with social skills lack of additional skills means that they rarely develop into leadership roles, a characteristic they take to their marriages. This is particularly detrimental to men who are then expected to assume the leadership role in a family but are normally unable to do so because of their own upbringing.

In conclusion the long term effects of divorce on children are detrimental because they lead to many psychologically and physical disorders that make it difficult for these children to adapt social values that will help them in forming stable relationships in the future. Divorce also clearly has an effect on the financial and social well being of children who are affected by it. The full effects of divorce can be reduced by surrounding the children with an enabling environment that will pass onto them social values and required financial and emotional support that will reduce the long terms effects of divorce. I argue that step families and specialized mentorship in schools will go someway in reducing these harmful effects of divorce. However there are clearly situations where divorce does mitigate against physical, emotional abuse that children may be getting from one parent. However in this case though the divorce would be better in the short term, these children would tend to be worse of than children whose parents are non abusive because they would suffer the long term effects of the divorce as well as the abuse.

REFERENCES

Kiernan, K. and Cherlin, A. J. (1999). Parental divorce and partnership dissolution in adulthood: evidence from a British cohort study. Population Studies, 53, 39-48

Ni Brolchain, M. (2001). ‘Divorce effects’ and causality in the social sciences. European social review, 17(1), 33-57

Biblarz, T.J. and Raftery, A. E. (1999). Family structure, educational attainment, and socioeconomic success: rethinking the “pathology of matriarchy “. American Journal of Sociology, 105(2), 321-365

Seltzer, J. (1994). Consequences of marital dissolution for children. Annual Review of Sociology, 20, 235-266

Mc Lanahan S. and Sandefur, G. (1994). Growing Up with a Single Parents: What Hurts, What Helps? Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

It is pretty amazing to discover that many of the worlds biggest Banks could get taken in by the exploits of one  well connected individual. It just goes to show how massive greed has corrupted the financial system all over the world and the full effect is yet to be felt by Emerging Economies such as Kenya.

Mr Jimnah Mbaru One of Kenya’s leading Financial Gurus, Chairman of Dyer and Blair has sounded the alarm bells on the state of the Kenyan Economy. He said the country has already suffered negative economic growths in the last two consecutive quarters; a clear indicator the economy was in a recession. Mbaru said other factors leading to the contraction of the economy include a decline in farm outputs, high cost of food as well as high transport costs due to high oil prices, which have prevailed recently. The question is how related is this crisis to the going ons in the West and how can the major financial players like Mbaru prevent a free fall.

Being part of a Business Consultancy(www.cymapk.com) that advices banks on how to implement IT solutions to monitor and track funds i know for sure that any offshore or foreign investments have to be tightly regulated to provide a safeguard for local Banking Industries. This failure to regulate in the west is really surprising and many are left wondering how this situation arose. Only time will tell perhaps.

My Irish friend Gerry called this the chicken’s coming home to roost. An old English saying that suitably depicts the state of many banks today.

How can we regulate against this greed ? How can we legislate against Pyramid or Ponzi Schemes which are still by commision legal in Kenya?

Here is the list of the Banks that have been affected worldwide.

• The Royal Bank of Scotland
• France’s BNP Paribas
• Spain’s Banco Santander
• Spain, Banco Santander
• HSBC

Create your Financial Blog at http://www.whive.com

Read more at CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/12/15/madoff.arrest.exposure/index.html

Read more at the Standard: http://www.eastandard.net/business/InsidePage.php?id=1144001462&cid=14&

As politicians create the post-election violence tribunal, it is important not to lose sight of the moral high ground factor at the heart of the troubles earlier this year.

Above all, from the very outset, all persons of goodwill must avoid the trap of moral equivalence. This will be the first and last resort of the real aggressors and would-be ‘genocidaires’ of the post-poll explosion.

The term ‘moral equivalence’ was bequeathed to the world by American philosopher William James 98 years ago, in his very last essay, ‘The Moral Equivalent of War’.

Put simply, moral equivalence is a truly dangerous fallacy that seeks to equate two sides in a conflict. It seeks to construe no distinction between killers and their victims. In political debate and philosophy, the doctrine of moral equivalence is the most cynical equivocation or double-speak.

It claims that the actions of both sides are equally reprehensible — equating a killer’s aggressive violence, complete with murder aforethought and vicious use of weapons, with a victim’s screams, fright, attempted flight and any defensive measure, including holding up of arms to stave off lethal blows. As we enter the tribunal process under the shadow of possible proceedings at The Hague, we need to keep a clear distinction between aggressive and self-defensive, life-preserving violence.

Self-defence can be defined as the ultimate right of every sentient creature. It is beyond the shadow of doubt, as well as beyond denial, that central Kenya communities were the targets of violence early this year. It is also beyond debate that the violence was massive, unprecedented and constituted an existential threat to the peoples of the Mt Kenya region.

WRETCHED LIE

The scale of the violence in some regions was such that it cannot possibly have been unplanned. To argue that the violence that tore through Kenya beginning on the early evening of December 30 last year and lasting for much of January was merely an episode of spontaneous mass madness is to tell a wretched lie.

When was the last time a mere loss of temper resulted in the displacement of 350,000 persons in a matter of 72 hours? Didn’t 2,000 youth kill about 30 women and children at the Kiambaa church two days after the presidential result was annouced?

Williams made this observation about the roots of war in the human psyche: “The earlier men were hunters and to hunt a neighbouring tribe, kill the males, loot the village and possess the females was the most profitable, as well as the most exciting, way of living. Thus, were the more martial tribes selected and in chiefs and peoples a pure pugnacity and love of glory came to mingle with the more fundamental appetite for plunder.”

This is the kind of violence loosed upon Mt Kenya communities in Rift Valley province, without any warning, mercy or sense of proportion. The aggressive violence unleashed on mostly Kikuyu peasants, on the pretext President Kibaki had “stolen” the election, did not take place in a pre-colonial setting but in one of Africa’s most modern states. This atavistic violence almost spiralled into civil war when reprisals began in Naivasha and Nakuru in the third week of January.

Again, Williams, in his 1910 essay, had very instructive words, this time on the intersection between the violence of earlier men and modern violence: “Modern war is so expensive we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder. But modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and love of glory of his ancestors.

“Showing war’s irrationality and horror is of no effect on him. The horrors make the fascination. War is the strong life; it is life in extremis; war taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us.”

In keeping with the nature of modern conflicts, post-election violence was brought to an end through international mediation, with the warring parties being urged to call a ceasefire and negotiate. As has been seen from time immemorial, both sides have sought the moral high ground, believing that their cause is superior.

At that juncture, even the doctrine of moral equivalence can be unwelcome to both sides. In the case of Kenya, we need to move beyond this would-be moral deadlock.

By Aristotle Omondi, A social science researcher at the University of Botswana.